Friday, November 28, 2008

Fluffy's World in 2025

I've remembered where the last post started, but ended up somewhere quite different. To save you trawling through it - it argued that the necessary next step is a world federation, in order to avoid the clashing of rising world tensions.

It's a truism that behind the most intense tension, lies the greatest possibility for peace.

On a micro level, I'm arguing that the shift to increasingly values-based decisions, as opposed to self-interested ones is causing a shift that is having an impact with a delightfully global reach. The discussion spanned into the implications for global international relations. But that's how it goes. I don;t write these as planned essays. They just emerge.

So there's a whole lot of movement in between. I've made the point that people (or us - I'm speaking as though out of the bubble)...that people will not put up with a socialist retrenchment, thay value their choice too much.

(((This by the way is the astuteness that unites Blair and Cameron, they have an acute idea of social changes afoot, but seek to manipulate it in different ways)))

What changes can we predict for the values economy? Here's Fluffy's five:

1) Corporate and Social Responsibility will become more entrenched, perhaps even institutionalised and regulated by public bodies. This is not just to keep an attractive public face but to ensure that more ethically-minded talent doesn't stray (you see - diffuse actions causing institutional change, we'll ignore for now that cultural attitudes are themselves institutions...))

2) Procurement policy - government will increasingly have to show it is meeting social targets with its own buying power. This is a reverse of the last decade's centralisation and managerialism, which squeezed out small suppliers and encouraged corporate concentration (perhaps the most significant institutional power today)

3) Localisation - return of the rural economy, green housing schemes and the rurality shared more equitably amongst the plebs. Companies forced to become more individualised even as ...

4) Federalisation occurs. We'll see the break up the multinational and associations of small businesses, alliances of services will be provided. This will be a mirrored at the state level, as the demands of greater international integration and closer attention to the needs of the people stretch centralised government both down and up.

5) One man as everything - multi-skilled, multitalented, renaissance man, more valuable than absurdly overspecialised tasks of today. This is the result of a two way push, people wanting to express themselves more broadly mean they enrich themselves in many more ways than narrow job tasks allow and the need for holistic thinking to join up segregated areas of thinking.